Maurice Chevalier – A New Yorker State of Mind

Winter Games

E.B. White was not known for his sports reporting, but when the Third Winter Olympic Games opened in Lake Placid, New York, on Feb. 4, 1932, it was White who represented the New Yorker at the first-ever winter games in the U.S.

Feb. 20, 1932 — seventh anniversary cover by, of course, **Rea Irvin!**

Famed caricaturist Emery Kelen (1896-1964) provided the artwork for White’s account of the games…

…which was featured in the “A Reporter at Large” section under the title, “Midwinter Madness.” White opened the piece with some observations on Godfrey Dewey, head of the Lake Placid Club, and son of Melvil Dewey, inventor of the Dewey Decimal System. It seems that Dewey wanted the Olympic posters printed in the simplified Dewey system of spelling:

BEFORE BOB COSTAS…Opening ceremonies were a far simpler affair. Clockwise, from top left, the III Winter Olympic Games officially opened on Feb. 4; **Sonja Henie** of Norway and **Karl Schäfer** of Austria were gold medal winners in ladies’ and men’s singles figure skating; the rather uninspired official poster for the event; as a pusher in the four-man bobsleigh team, **Edward Eagan** (center) won the gold medal with the USA I team. Twelve years earlier Eagan had been crowned Olympic champion in the light heavyweight boxing competition at Antwerp. He was the first and only person to win gold at both the summer and winter games. Note the leather helmets and the fact that, unlike today, the sled is actually a real sled. (olympic.org/Wikipedia)

True to form, White set the stage for the games by describing his train journey to Lake Placid. At the games he observed dogsled teams — dogsled racing was one of nine sports featured at the III Winter Olympics — and marveled at the derring-do of the ski-jumpers.

Writing in the Atlantic (Feb. 10, 2014), Philip Bump described the 1932 Games as looking “way more fun and dangerous” than today’s games, “like a group of guys who set up a competition in the woods behind their house. The Jackass Games, really.” They were a lot smaller, too. The 2018 Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea featured entrants from 92 countries participating in 102 events over 15 disciplines. By contrast, just 17 countries participated the 1932 games.

HOVERING HANS…Norwegian Olympic skier **Hans Vinjarengen** took Bronze at the 1932 games. At right, ski jump at Lake Placid. (olympic.com/Wikipedia)

And we close with this gif of an unidentified ski jumper at the ’32 games…

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Seeing Red

The Mexican painter Diego Rivera was sympathetic to the Soviet cause (with a Trotsky twist), but to the party faithful, painting a mural for some money-grubbing capitalists was unforgivable, as “The Talk of the Town” related…

NO GOODNIK…Left, **Diego Rivera** at work on Allegory of California at the San Francisco Stock Exchange Luncheon Club, 1931. At right, the mural still graces the stairwell of the building, now called “City Club.” (sfhistory.org).

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Thank Heaven For Little Smiles

It is a challenge to find an image of Maurice Chevalier without his sunny smile, but as “The Talk of the Town” revealed, even the French crooner needed a break from all that mirth…

GRIN AND BEAR IT...Maurice Chevalier headlined an evening of song and dance at the Fulton Theatre in February 1932. (playbill.com)

* * *

Survivor

The last surviving artist of the old Currier & Ives print shop, Louis Maurer (1832 – 1932) celebrated his 100th birthday, and “The Talk of the Town” was there to fete the old man…

AMERICANA’S FINEST…**Louis Maurer** poses with one of his works on the centenary of his birth. (findagrave.com)

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Silence is Golden

One of the older actors working in Hollywood, British actor George Arliss (1868 – 1946) was best known for his role in Disraeli (1929), and he is also credited with promoting the career of 23-year-old actress Bette Davis, who would have her breakout role in The Man Who Played God. This remake of a 1922 silent (that also featured Arliss) told the story of a concert pianist, Montgomery Royale, who believes his career is over when he loses his hearing. However, he finds a new purpose when he uses his lip-reading skills to help others, including himself when he calls off his engagement to Grace (Davis) after learning she is in love with another man. Critic John Mosher was impressed by Arliss, but found the film sanctimonious and wished the actor would play a baddie for a change.

TWO-TIMER…**George Arliss** appeared in both silent (1922) and talking (1932) versions of the *The Man Who Played God.* The latter film featured 23-year-old **Bette Davis** (second from left) in her breakout role. (IMDB)

DRAMA KING…Concert pianist Montgomery Royale (**George Arliss**) considers suicide when he loses his hearing. Arliss was the first British actor to win an Academy Award for his role as PM Benjamin Disraeli in 1929’s *Disraeli.* (IMDB)

While Mosher found The Man Who Played God a bit too preachy, Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932) was way too campy to be taken seriously as a horror film. Thanks to his newfound Dracula fame, Bela Lugosi headlined the film, which debuted another young star, Arlene Francis (1907 – 2001), who would find her greatest fame in television from 1949 to 1983, most notably on the long-running quiz show What’s My Line?

HORROR MONSTER SHOW…or so the producers of *Murders in the Rue Morgue* (1932) claimed. Still image from the movie featured Bela Lugosi (left), **Noble Johnson** and Arlene Francis. (IMDB)

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From Our Advertisers

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…for others, why even bother pretending Prohibition is still a thing?…

…and look at this swell cocktail set you could stock in your Bantam Bar, designed by the New Yorker’s own John Held Jr…

…on to our cartoons, we have Held again with another look at those naughty Victorian days…

…Rea Irvin continued his commentary on the “improving” economy…

...Richard Decker gave us a master of understatement…

…William Steig captured a special father-son moment…

…Barbara Shermund continued to explore the ways of her modern women…

…given the recent kerfuffle over Dr. Seuss, Carl Rose confirms just how acceptable racist stereotypes were back in the day…

…and we end with Peter Arno, and one sugar daddy finding himself on the skids, temporarily at least…

Next Time: MoMA Sees The Future…

A Blue Angel

The German actor Emil Jannings was well-known to American audiences when The Blue Angel (Der blaue Engel) premiered at New York’s Rialto Theatre. Although the film was created as a vehicle for the Academy Award-winning Jannings (he won the Academy’s first-ever best actor award in 1929), it was the little-known Marlene Dietrich who stole the show and made it her ticket to international stardom.

Dec. 13, 1930 cover by **Ralph Barton,** surprisingly his only cover for the *New Yorker.* The illustration sadly belies Barton’s state of mind at the time; he would take his own life the following spring.

New Yorker film critics, including John Mosher, generally found foreign films, particularly those of German or Russian origin, to be superior to the treacle produced in Hollywood, and Jannings was a particular favorite, delivering often heart-wrenching performances in such silent dramas as The Last Laugh (1924) and The Way of All Flesh (1927). In those films he depicted once-proud men who fell on hard times, and such was the storyline for The Blue Angel, in which a respectable professor falls for a cabaret singer and descends into madness.

NO CONTEST…**Emil Jannings** had star billing for the English language version of **Josef von Sternberg’s** *The Blue Angel,* but it was **Marlene Dietrich’s** portrayal of cabaret singer Lola Lola that stole the show. (IMDB)

I was surprised by Mosher’s somewhat tepid review of this landmark film, which was shot simultaneously in German and English (with different supporting casts in each version). He referenced “bum dialogue,” which was doubtless the result of German actors struggling with English pronunciations. Filmed in 1929, it is considered to be Germany’s first “talkie.”

PRIDE BEFORE THE FALL…A proud and stern schoolmaster named Immanuel Rath (**Emil Jannings)** falls for cabaret singer Lola Lola (**Marlene Dietrich**), and from there his life unravels; he loses the respect of his pupils, then resigns his post to marry Lola. To make ends meet, Rath tries to sell racy photos of his wife, and then becomes a clown in her troupe and is regularly humiliated on stage. Destitute, he dies at the end of the film. (IMDB)

* * *

All Wet

Sergei Tretyakov’s avant-garde play Roar China made an impression on the New Yorker for the striking realism of its set, which featured an 18,000-gallon tank of water onstage at the Martin Beck Theatre. “The Talk of the Town” described some of the demands of the production:

STAYING AFLOAT…The elaborate set for Roar China featured a model battleship in 18,000 gallons of water.

ROAR CHINA! was an anti-imperialist play depicting the Wanhsien Incident during the Chinese Civil War. Many in the Chinese cast members were non-professional actors. (New York Public Library)

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By Any Other Name

Like many college football teams in first decades of the 20th century, Notre Dame was referred to by a number of nicknames, including the “Fighting Irish.” In this “Talk of the Town” item, however, the team was known as the “Ramblers.” According to the University of Notre Dame, this nickname (along with “The Rovers”) was considered something of an insult: “(Knute) Rockne’s teams were often called the Rovers or the Ramblers because they traveled far and wide, an uncommon practice before the advent of commercial airplanes. These names were also an insult to the school, meant to suggest it was more focused on football than academics.”

RAMBLERS NO MORE…The 1930 National Champion Notre Dame football team. (nd.edu)

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The Wright Stuff

Eric Hodgins penned a profile of aviation pioneer Orville Wright, who just 27 years earlier made a historic “first flight” with his brother, Wilbur, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. An excerpt:

DRESSED FOR SUCCESS: Aviation pioneer **Orville Wright** (1871 – 1958) sits in one of his biplanes dressed in a three-piece suit and a cap, Dayton, Ohio, 1909. (ge.com)

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No Love Parade, This

French singer and actor Maurice Chevalier made his Hollywood debut in 1928 and quickly soared to stardom in America. French audiences, however, were not so easily swayed, especially the elite patrons Chevalier faced, alone on the stage, at the cavernous Théâtre du Châtelet. Janet Flanner explained in this dispatch from Paris:

THEY LIKE ME IN TINSELTOWN…**Jeanette MacDonald** and **Maurice Chevalier** in *The Love Parade* (1929). (IMDB)

GULP…**Maurice Chevalier** faced a tough crowd — his compatriots — at Paris’s Théâtre du Châtelet. (en.parisinfo.com)

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Man’s Best Friend

The New Yorker’s book section recommended the latest from Rudyard Kipling, Thy Servant a Dog…

WOOF…Illustrations for **Rudyard Kipling’s** *Thy Servant a Dog,* by **Marguerite Kirmse.** (Etsy)

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Fun and Games

As an extension to her fashion column, Lois Long shared some recommendations for holiday cocktail-party games:

KEEPING THINGS MERRY…Pokerette and Gee-Wiz were popular cocktail party diversions during the Christmas season of 1930. (Worthpoint/Invaluable)

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From Our Advertisers

We start with this ad from Horace Liveright promoting Peter Arno’s third cartoon collection, Hullaballoo, featuring one of Arno’s leering old “Walruses”…

…Doubleday Doran offered a few selections for last-minute Christmas shoppers, led by the Third New Yorker Album…

…The UK’s Harold Searles Thorton invented the table top game we now call “foosball” in 1921 and had it patented in 1923. Below is possibly the game’s first appearance in the U.S. — an ad for a “new” game called “Kikit.” Foosball would be slow to catch on, but would rapidly gain popularity in Europe in the 1950s and in the U.S. in the 1970s…

Early foosball players circa 1930. (foosball.org)

…Horace Heidt and his Californians were doing their best to make the season bright at the Hotel New Yorker…

…Peck & Peck tried to make the most of Prohibition by stuffing scarves and other wares into empty Champagne bottles…

…and Franklin Simon reminded readers that it would be a “Pajama-Negligee Christmas,” whatever that meant…

…pajamas and negligees were doubtless preferable, and more romantic, than this array of kitchen appliances…

…whatever the holiday revelry, the makers of Milk of Magnesia had our backs…

…on to our cartoonists, Julian De Miskey and Constantin Alajalov contributed spot drawings to mark the season…

…A.S. Foster contributed two cartoons to the issue…

…Gardner Rea, a full-pager…

…Leonard Dove, possibly having some fun with playwright Marc Connelly…

…I. Klein demonstrated the fun to be had with a kiddie scooter, before they had motors…

…and we close with John Reynolds, and some bad table manners…

Next Time: Happy Holidays…

Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Writer

As a book reviewer for the New Yorker, Dorothy Parker could eviscerate any writer with the tip of her pen, and often did so.

Nov. 30, 1929 cover by **Adolph K. Kronengold.**

One writer, however, who received consistent praise from Parker was Ernest Hemingway, whom she first met in 1926. In the pages of the 1920s New Yorker, Parker particularly lauded Hemingway’s short story collections, In Our Time (1925) and Men Without Women (1927), which bookended his 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises (which Parker thought OK but overly hyped). When the New Yorker profiled Hemingway in the Nov. 30, 1929 issue, it naturally turned to Parker to do the honors (although Robert Benchley, a good friend of Hemingway’s, could have offered his own take on the author) :

SHE’S A FAN…**Dorothy Parker** was a long-time admirer of the work of **Ernest Hemingway.** His last work of the 1920s, *A Farewell to Arms*, was serialized in *Scribner’s Magazine* and published in September 1929. The success of that book made Hemingway financially independent. (Mugar Library/Wikipedia)

During Hemingway’s Paris years Parker actually took a boat with him to France (in 1926, along with mutual friend Robert Benchley) and so got a firsthand taste of his bohemian adventures. By the time the New Yorker profiled Hemingway, the Jazz Age was dead and Paris’s so-called “Lost Generation” was a thing of the past. Indeed, Hemingway had already been in the States for more than a year, returning in 1928 with his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer (their son, Patrick Miller Hemingway, was born in June 1928 in Kansas City. Patrick still lives in Kansas City, and is now 90 years old).

Biographer Jeffrey Meyers notes in his book Hemingway: A Biography, that Hemingway of the early Paris years was a “tall, handsome, muscular, broad-shouldered, brown-eyed, rosy-cheeked, square-jawed, soft-voiced young man,” features that were not lost on Parker:

I’M TAKING NOTES…Ernest **Hemingway** (left), with **Harold Loeb, Lady Duff Twysden (in hat),** Hemingway’s first wife Hadley Richardson, Donald Ogden Stewart (obscured), and Pat Guthrie (far right) at a café in Pamplona, Spain, July 1925. The group formed the basis for the characters in *The Sun Also Rises*: Twysden as Brett Ashley, Loeb as Robert Cohn, Stewart as Bill Gorton, and Guthrie as Mike Campbell. (Wikipedia)

…more from Parker on Hemingway’s magnetic appeal…

MAN ABOUT TOWN…**Ernest Hemingway** (far right) in 1926 in Paris, outside the city’s famous *Shakespeare and Company* bookshop. He is pictured here with **Sylvia Beach** (on his right), the shop’s founder. (Collection Lausat/Keyston-France/parisinsidersguide.com)

Although Hemingway remains widely read and revered, such a hagiography — especially from someone as reliably critical as Parker — would be unlikely today. From his safari massacres of countless animals (in pursuit of his manhood) to his mistreatment of four wives and general misogyny, he is a far more complex and controversial figure today. One thing Parker got right: his short stories have held up much better than his novels. As for the profile, Parker concluded:

* * *

Meet the Fokkers

In previous blogs we have established that E.B. White was an aviation enthusiast. He seems never to have missed an opportunity to catch a ride into the skies, so when pilots were conducting test flights of a prototype Fokker F-32 at New Jersey’s Teterboro field, he was there to file this brief for “The Talk of the Town”…

SKYTRAIN…Title card from a silent Paramount newsreel reporting on a November 1929 flight of the Fokker F-32 at Teterboro. Note how the title card uses a railroad reference (“Pullman”) as a descriptive for the passenger cabin. Indeed, early airplane passenger cabins were very much designed along the lines of Pullman cars. At right, a circa 1930 photo, possibly of a celebration of the plane’s arrival in Los Angeles. I imagine the FAA would not look kindly on this behavior today. (YouTube/petersonfield.org)

White’s enthusiasm for the aviation age is palpable in his description of the Fokker as it took off and climbed to a thousand feet:

ROUGHING IT…Passengers in Washington D.C. prepare to board what was perhaps the same plane White flew on at Teterboro. Note how they were required to walk across a muddy field to reach the plane’s entrance. The Fokker was the first four-engine commercial aircraft built in America and the largest land plane in the world at the time (there was a much larger amphibious German plane). At right, the plane’s four engines were configured back-to-back. (Wikipedia/petersonfield.org) *click to enlarge*

I suppose it was in line with the New Yorker’s stance of keeping things light, but White’s dispassionate account of a plane crash earlier that day seemed a bit cold. From the air he described a scene just north of midtown, where a crowd had gathered near the site the crash. The pilot was killed, but a passenger managed to parachute to safety.

DOWN TO EARTH…Pilot **Charles Reid** died instantly when his plane slammed into a YMCA on 64th Street on Nov. 20, 1929. His passenger parachuted to safety. **E.B. White** referred to the crash in his “Talk” article. (digital-hagley-org)

Excerpt from a Nov. 21, 1929 *New York Times* account of the crash. (NYTimes archives)

Speaking of crashes, the Fokker on which E.B. White was a passenger crashed a week later (Nov. 27, 1929) during a certification flight from Roosevelt Field to Teterboro Airport. No one was killed, but the aircraft was destroyed. The design itself didn’t last much longer — considered underpowered for its size, and too expensive at the dawn of the Depression, it was phased out by the end of 1930.

Perhaps after all of that flying, White needed something to calm the nerves, a subject he addressed in his “Notes and Comment” column:

THE WOMAN’S HOUR, according to **E.B. White** in his “Notes and Comment” column. (vinepair.com)

* * *

The Little Gallery That Could

“Talk,” via art critic Murdock Pemberton, had more to say about the new Museum of Modern Art, that is, not taking it very seriously…

UPSTART…Although the *New Yorker’s* art critic **Murdock Pemberton** seemed dismissive of the new Museum of Modern Art, its first month’s attendance was more than 47,000 visitors. Image above from the MoMA exhibition *Painting in Paris*, Jan. 19-March 2, 1930. (MoMA)

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Welcome to Thurber World

In 1931 James Thurber published his second book, The Owl in the Attic and Other Perplexities, which consisted of pieces he had done for the New Yorker, including eight stories (from Dec. 29, 1928 to Aug. 9, 1930) that featured the marital escapades of a couple in their middle thirties, the Monroes, modeled on Thurber’s real-life marriage to his wife, Althea.

The Nov. 30, 1929 issue included Thurber’s fifth installment of the Monroe saga, “Mr. Monroe Holds the Fort,” in which a fearful Mr. Monroe, left home alone (his wife was visiting her mother), imagines there are burglars in the house:

…like his famous character Walter Mitty, which Thurber would introduce in 1939, Mr. Monroe had an equally lively imagination…

The character of Mr. Monroe would see new life in the fall of 1969 when NBC debuted My World… and Welcome to It, a half-hour sitcom based on James Thurber’s stories and cartoons. The actor William Windom portrayed John Monroe, a writer and cartoonist who worked for a magazine called The Manhattanite. In the show, Monroe’s daydreams and fantasies were usually based, if sometimes loosely, on Thurber’s writings.

THURBER AS A SITCOM…The actor **William Windom** portrayed John Monroe, a writer and cartoonist who worked for a magazine called *The Manhattanite,* on the 1969-70 NBC sitcom *My World… and Welcome to It.* **Joan Hotchkis** played his wife Ellen, and **Lisa Gerritsen** portrayed his inquisitive daughter Lydia. (tvguidemagazine.com/sitcomsonline.com)

HOME SWEET HOME…Left, the opening credits for *My World… and Welcome to It* featured actor **William Windom** (as John Monroe) entering a animated house based on James Thurber’s famous “House and Woman” cartoon, which was originally featured in the March 23, 1935 issue of the *New Yorker.* (mikelynchcartoons.blogspot.com)

My World… and Welcome to It was cancelled after one season. Nevertheless, it would win two Emmies: one for Windom and another for Best Comedy Series.

* * *

Thank Heaven for Maurice

Things were looking up a bit in the talking movie department thanks to the Ernst Lubitsch-directed The Love Parade, featuring recent French import Maurice Chevalier and Jeannette MacDonald. Film critic John Mosher observed:

MUCH-NEEDED LAUGHS…**Jeannette MacDonald** and **Maurice Chevalier** in *The Love Parade* (1929), directed by Ernst Lubitsch. (MoMA)

Mosher was much less impressed by another musical, Show of Shows, featuring an all-star cast and Technicolor that added up to little more than a “stunt”…

IS THAT ALL?…Warner Brothers *Show of Shows* offered “77 Hollywood Stars” and “1000 Hollywood Beauties” — 80 percent of it in Technicolor, but that wasn’t enough to impress the *New Yorker’s* film critic **John Mosher**. At right, **Arte Frank Fay** (l) and comic **Sid Silvers** in a color scene from the film. (IMDB)

* * *

A Guide to Christmas Shopping, 1929

Lois Long’s fashion column, “On and Off the Avenue,” predictably grew in length as the Christmas holiday approached, and in the Nov. 30 issue she offered advice on how to go about one’s shopping duties. Some brief excerpts:

TRAILBLAZER…**Lois Long** guided *New Yorke*r readers through a list of “big, bewildering stores” in her “On and Off the Avenue” column. At left, the B. Altman department store, circa 1920s. (thedepartmentstoremuseum.org/PBS)

…Long’s column was peppered with holiday-themed spots, including this one by Julian DeMiskey…

From Our Advertisers

…we start with a couple of back page ads, including one from the National Winter Garden’s burlesque show and an ad announcing the imminent arrival of Peter Arno’s Parade (just $3.50, or signed by Arno himself for $25)…

Cover and inside pages from **Peter Arno’s** *Parade.* (Amazon)

…another ad hailed the arrival of the New Yorker’s second album (read more about it here at Michael Maslin’s excellent Ink Spill)…

The first and second *New Yorker* albums. (pbase.com/michaelmaslin.com)

…other ads, in full color, featured cultural appropriation by the Santa Fe railroad…

…bright silks available at the Belding Hemingway Company…

…silk stockings from Blue Moon…

…for our cartoons, Helen Hokinson on the challenges of holiday shopping…

…Hokinson again, at tea with her ladies…

…Barbara Shermund, and the miracle of broadcast radio crossed with the nuances of a dinner party…

…and Shermund again, with a hapless friend of a clueless family…

Next Time: Feeling the Holiday Pinch…

Prelude to a Crash

Although two months remained in the decade, the New Yorker of the Roaring Twenties effectively ended with this issue, just days before a massive market crash sent the nation spiraling into the Great Depression.

Oct. 26, 1929 cover by **Theodore Haupt.** Wonderful rendering of The New York Central Building, with shades of **Georgia O’Keeffe.**

Not a soul at the New Yorker had an inkling of the bleakness that lay ahead — rampant unemployment, the rise of the Nazi party, the Dust Bowl, Busby Berkeley musicals…

E.B. White, in “Notes & Comment,” was concerned with little more than the changing countryside…

MADE YOU LOOK…Examples of roadside vernacular architecture from the 1920s included the Airplane Cafe in in the San Fernando Valley (1924) and a 1927 Wadham’s gas station in West Allis, Illinois, now on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. More than 100 of Wadham’s “pagodas” were built, but like much of roadside America, few examples remain. At top, right, a 1920s billboard advertising *Moxie* soft drinks. (last1onthebus.com/Pinterest/Wikipedia)

THE DUCK STOPS HERE…The Big Duck in Flanders, New York, was built in 1930-31 by Long Island duck farmer Martin Maurer to sell duck and duck eggs to passing motorists. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2008. (Google Maps)

…and further on in “The Talk of the Town,” White shared these observations regarding the popularity of shirts worn by French actor Maurice Chevalier…

THAT’S SHA-VAHL-YEY…**Claudette Colbert** and **Maurice Chevalier** in 1930’s *The Big Pond.* (IMDB)

* * *

Born to Be

The book review featured an autobiography, Born to Be, written by Taylor Gordon (1893-1971), a famed singer of the Harlem Renaissance, that traced his life journey from Montana to New York. The book included 10 full-page illustrations by Mexican artist Miguel Covarrubias, and forwards by Carl Van Vechten and Muriel Draper.

FROM MONTANA TO HARLEM…First edition of Taylor Gordon’s *Born to Be,* and illustrations from the book by **Miguel Covarrubias** (including cover image). The image at bottom left features patron of the Harlem Renaissance **Carl Van Vechten**, with Gordon. (qbbooks.com/klinebooks.com/Pinterest)

* * *

Little Narcissus

Although today she is known mostly as Errol Flynn’s first wife, the tempestuous French actress Lily Damita (1904-1994) knew how to light up New York and get noticed in Hollywood when she made her American debut in 1929. Henry F. Pringle looked in on Damita’s daily life in the Oct. 26 “Profile.” A brief excerpt:

**Lily Damita** in a 1931 publicity photo. (Flickr)

DEBUT FILM…**Lily Damita** and **Ronald Coleman** in 1929’s *The Rescue,* Damita’s first Hollywood film. (Dr. Macro)

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A Master Achievement

Architecture critic George Chappell gazed upward in admiration for the new Master Building on Riverside Drive. It was one of the city’s first mixed-use structures and the first New York skyscraper to feature corner windows. The apartment building originally housed a museum, a school of the fine and performing arts, and an international art center on its first three floors. The building fell into decline in the late 1960s, but today it thrives as a housing co-operative. The Master was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2016.

…on to our advertisements, we find another art deco landmark, the 1930 Squibb building, designed Ely Jacques Kahn…

The Squibb Building at 745 5th Avenue, circa 1930. (Museum of the City of New York)

…Halloween was just around the corner (yes, I’m running a bit behind!) and although it wasn’t a huge holiday as it is today, its presence still permeated the pages of the New Yorker, including a humorous piece by John O’Hara on the challenges of planning a Halloween party…

From left, excerpt from **John O’Hara’s** piece; an ad from Doubleday featuring a jack-o-lantern; an ad from Breyer’s ice cream that employed the older spelling of the holiday; at bottom, a filler illustration by Julian De Miskey.

…the makers of Marmon autos offered this lovely autumn scene…

…here is an unusual ad from a milliner named Mercedes who bid adieu to former clients in this hand-written, full-page entry…

…the name Michael Arlen no doubt caught many a reader’s eye in the Oct. 26 issue. The comings-and-goings of this hugely popular author of thrillers such as The Green Hat (1924) provided much-needed fodder for readers of the first issues of the fledging New Yorker. In this ad, Arlen’s wife, the Countess Atalanta Mercati, shills for Cutex nail polish…

The Countess Atalanta Mercati of Greece and author Michael Arlen were married in France in 1928. (Conde Nast/insiderguide.me)

…and we have more of the torch singer Helen Morgan, this time in an ad for Lux Toilet Soap…

…a couple of back page ads…the now ubiquitous metal folding table (and chairs) was something of a novelty in 1929…the ad on the right from Brunswick Records offers up the latest schmaltz from Al Jolson (I know it’s 1929, but come on Al, really?)…

…and since this is the last edition before the big market crash, here’s a collection of images clipped from various ads in the Oct. 26 issue…featuring high-living folks who should appear a bit less smug after they lose their mink coats and boiled shirts to the Depression…

Clockwise, top left, a sampling of illustrations from ads in the Oct. 26 issue: there seemed to be no item too mundane for the posh treatment—an illustration that graced an ad from Frigidaire; superior airs displayed on behalf of the Drake apartments, and below, also on behalf of (sniff) Gotham Gold Stripe stockings; “Arabella” surveys two of her hapless conquests as she descends the stair in an illustration for a Marie Earle salon ad; and an appeal to the city’s rampant Anglophilia from De Pinna of Fifth Avenue.

…on to our comics, Garner Rea demonstrated his mastery of space in this full-page entry…

…Alice Harvey eavesdropped on the chit-chat of some toffs at dinner…

…and Alice Harvey again in this sparer illustration of a spoiler at the opera…

…Peter Arno illustrated unexpected intimacy on a commuter train…

…and from John Reynolds, with a sign of things to come…

Next Time: An Inconvenient Truth…

Modern English Usage

The fourth anniversary issue of the New Yorker gave every indication that the magazine had arrived as a cultural force.

Fourth anniversary cover, Feb. 23, 1929, by **Rea Irvin.**

Rich in content, the issue’s offering’s ranged from the famed humorous short “You Were Perfectly Fine” by Dorothy Parker, a profile of famed maestro Arturo Toscanini, and various accounts on the romance between Charles Lindbergh and Anne Morrow. The issue also featured this “organization chart” drawn by Julian de Miskey:

The little door marked “Tony’s” in the bottom right-hand corner referred to a celebrated speakeasy operated by Tony Soma. It was a second home to many New Yorker staffers, and was patronized by hard-drinking actors and writers including Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley, and also a young actor named Humphrey Bogart.

Another notable item in the Feb. 23 issue was this contribution by James Thurber in which he lampooned H.W. Fowler’s Modern English Usage, a handbook that New Yorker Editor-in-Chief Harold Ross considered to be the last word in matters of punctuation and grammar. Thurber would write a dozen entries in this series, including the following (click to enlarge):

The New Yorker could never get enough of Charles Lindbergh, even though his personality was every bit as wooden as that of the former President Calvin Coolidge. The Feb. 23 “Talk of the Town” speculated on “Charlie’s” affections for Anne Morrow, and the woe that would befall anyone who challenged the famed flyboy for those affections:

COME FLY WITH ME…**Anne Morrow Lindbergh** and **Charles Lindbergh** shortly after their marriage in May 1929. (Bio.com)

SON-IN-LAW…Charles and Anne visiting Anne’s parents, **Elisabeth and Dwight Morrow**, in 1931. Charles met Anne during a visit to Mexico when Dwight was served as ambassador to that country. (kaiology.wordpress.com)

A second item in the Feb. 23 “Talk” section took a closer look at Charles’ courtship habits, or lack thereof…

Even Howard Brubaker got in a word regarding the Lindbergh-Morrow courtship in his column, “Of All Things”…

As we know, Brubaker had it wrong. Rather than pining away at home, Anne would become one of the 20th century’s most beloved writers, a leading feminist voice, and an accomplished aviator in her own right.

SORRY CHARLIE…As one for the most beloved writers of the 20th century, **Anne Morrow Lindbergh** would go on to match and even eclipse her husband’s fame. (PBS)

* * *

Little Yehudi

Yehudi Menuhin is known to classical music lovers as one of the greatest violinists of the 20th century. But as this “Talk” item suggests, he was once a little boy, more or less…

STILL IN SHORT PANTS…A young **Yehudi Menuhin** poses with conductor **Bruno Walter** in Berlin, 1931. Just two years after this photo was taken, Walter would flee Nazi Germany and eventually settle in the U.S. (Wikipedia)

* * *

More Fun With Lois

Although Lois Long devoted most of her ink to her weekly fashion column, “On and Off the Avenue,” she continued to write her nightlife column, “Tables for Two,” though somewhat sporadically. Which makes sense because around this time Long was also either pregnant (she was married to New Yorker cartoonist Peter Arno) or was now the mother of a daughter, Patricia. The reason I’m not sure is that I have birth dates from both 1928 and 1929 for Patricia, depending on sources. At any rate, Long was taking in the nightlife in a big way, moving from club to club and assessing the quality of their various acts:

At the Lido, Beatrice Lillie sang “for the edification of devoted admirers”…

AT THE LIDO you could see British actress, singer and comedic performer **Beatrice Lillie** light up the stage. (vintag.es)

…Long also commented on the arrival of French entertainer Maurice Chevalier, who promised to inject some life into the Paul Whitman Orchestra performing at the Ziegfeld Midnight Frolic…

Flyer announcing **Maurice Chevalier’s** upcoming performance at the Ziegfeld Midnight Frolic.

THANK HEAVEN…**Maurice Chevalier** in a 1929 publicity photo. He is mostly known today for his appearance in the 1958 film *Gigi* and his rendition of “Thank Heaven for Little Girls.” (thefamouspeople.com)

As for the rest of the New York nightlife, Long hoped that in the end it was all for fun, and that there was no “deep meaning” behind the frivolity:

SHALLOW WATERS…Eddie Jackson, Jimmy Durante, Lou Clayton performing their act in the motion picture *Roadhouse Nights*, 1930. (digitalcollections.nypl.org)

* * *

Something In the Air

The “On The Air” column noted that NBC had made a brave attempt at rebroadcasting the music of the London Symphony Orchestra from Queen’s Hall and had “succeeded in coaxing a section of Rachmaninoff’s E Minor Symphony across the Atlantic.” It was also reported that the General Electric Company of Schenectady, in its ongoing research into television, had successful sent an image of famed film director D.W. Griffith across the country to California. In a separate item. “The Talk of the Town” also reported on the achievement…

…and advances continued in motion pictures, the “talkies” quickly overtaking the silents and even resorting to such tricks as lip-syncing:

SORRY DEAR, YOU’VE BEEN DUBBED…**Betty Compson** with **Richard Barthelmess** in Weary River. While Barthelmess’s character sings and plays the piano throughout the film, Barthelmess himself did not sing or play the piano. Frank Churchill played the piano and Johnny Murray sang into a microphone far away from Barthelmess while he lip-synced and played a piano which had strings deadened with felt. (TCM)

* * *

For the anniversary issue, and for old time’s sake, the New Yorker tossed in this little filler joke from its first issue, a joke that was repeated ad nauseam in subsequent issues:

This riddle, told backwards, appeared to be a mistake, but it was most likely an attack on two-liners found in humor magazines of the day like Judge and Punch.

From Our Advertisers

Advertising was booming for the New Yorker in 1929, the magazine recording nearly $2 million in ad sales that year (compared to just $36,000 in their first year, 1925). Now on to the ads…

In a recent post we followed the mostly wealthy New York snowbirds down to Palm Beach, Florida, which during the 1920s grew from a quiet village to a resort for the rich and famous. For those who couldn’t make it, they could install “Vita Glass” and bring Palm Beach to Park Avenue…